which film / & film or digital

Hi Untruth,

I have access to a D100 and though it's a fine camera, I never consider
anything but film for serious shooting. To me it just feels different,
both in shooting and in the results (I love my film cameras too!). I
also switch back and forth from CN to CS films, depending on my mood, I
guess. I enjoy working with both. Usually I use one or the other, but
not both on the same assignment or job.

My favorite slide films are reala 100 and an occasional ektachrome.
Provia and Velvia are ok, but a little contrasty for me. For CN films,
I like Portra 100 and Agfa UC100. I'm sure there are others just as
good or better that I haven't tried. It's to a large degree a matter of
preference.

I also use B&W films, but not as much as I used to. Usually end up
using Tri-x or HP5. Sometimes these are easy to scan (CN mode), and
other times they're tough. My scanner is a Coolscan V.

Slides are sometimes more fun to scan, just because there's something
to compare both before and after. They do seem tougher than color
negatives though. Color negatives usually scan with much less fuss and
they give beautiful results. The only problem I have with color
negative film is depth of field across the scanned frame.

I usually scan using Vuescan, but sometimes I start out with Nikon Scan
and end up rolling along with that until something isn't coming out
quite right. It's good to have options.

Hope this helps.

BTW, Someone mentioned overexposing CN film -- I used to do this before
digital and would usually get finer grain from the 400 films. If the
negative is too dense, though, the scanner may have a hard time
focusing on it.

Dan